How many games are the Blue Jays on top in the American League East anyway?

Man, this team must be as a good as advertised.

Four men who normally sport Toronto jerseys were wearing blue American League uniforms during batting practice prior to the Chevy Home Run derby Monday night at Citi Field.

Jose Bautista will be in the starting lineup, hitting third for the American League as it tries to break its three-year losing streak Tuesday night in the 84th all-star game.

Edwin Encarnacion will be on the bench, plus relievers Brett Cecil and Steve Delabar (pronounced Day-LAY-bar on ESPN News when he won the fan voting).

Four Jays.

The Blue Jays haven’t had this many in the all-star game since the 2006 edition in Pittsburgh when Troy Glaus, Roy Halladay, B.J. Ryan, Alex Rios and Vernon Wells were elected to play at PNC Park. Those Jays, under manager John Gibbons, were five games off the pace in the AL East, 49-39 and 10 games back in the wild-card hunt.

These Jays under the same manager are dead last in the East, 45-49, 111/2 games behind the Boston Red Sox, who have three representatives, and are ninth in the wild-card standings, 81/2 games behind.

What’s that saying about the whole not being as great as the sums of its parts?

“Four all-stars? It should mean we have a good team,” said Bautista. “It doesn’t make sense, but judging how good a team is by the number of all-stars is a difficult way to decide how good a team is.”

So, as we used to ask Blue Jays all-stars Ricky Romero, Vernon Wells, Roy Halladay, Ted Lilly, Carlos Delgado, David Wells, Shawn Green, Roger Clemens, Pat Hentgen and Joe Carter over the past 21 all-star workout days ... what went wrong in the first half?

And how can a team with four all-stars sit dead last?

Bautista, who is hitting .254 with an .844 OPS: “We’ve been inconsistent and I’ve been the No. 1 guy. We had that 11-game winning streak and somehow we managed to lose that momentum.

“We have so many games where we are a key hit away from winning. We have to play better against the AL East. We don’t have to play our best, but we have to play better — some nights teams can still win even if it doesn’t have its best game.”

Encarnacion: “We have the talent. We have to keep working hard and focus. We have to get our offence, our starting pitching and fielding going all at the same time.”

Cecil: “As long as everyone continues to focus, we can still run off another streak. We have not stopped working hard. Hopefully, after the break, we’ll we able to get things going again.”

Delabar, as if downplaying why he was here despite his 5-1 record, nifty 1.71 ERA and 58 strikeouts in 42 innings: “Hey, I made it here on the fan vote. I had an entire country behind me voting — and Atlanta Braves fans. This is not what we wanted ... to be this far behind? Our team is really good, but we have not shown it.

“Did we expect to be in last at the break when we were in Florida? No. We didn’t expect it opening day. I’ll bet if you ask any fan or any writer if he thought we’d be in last, they’d probably say, ‘Yeah, right.’

“Our biggest problem is that we’ve been inconsistent. When our pitching is good, our hitting is down. When out hitting is good, our pitching is down.”

As Gilda Radner’s Saturday Night Live character Roseanne Roseannadanna used to say: “Well, Jane, it just goes to show ya! It’s always somethin’! If it’s not one thing, it’s another!”

And it has been something — everything — on different nights: The starting pitching, the hitting and the defence.

What does general manager Alex Anthopoulos have to do as the Jays approach the July 31 non-waiver, trade deadline?

“Alex is not on the field,” said Bautista, who a year ago in Kansas City told his reporters his GM should go out and get one or two or three starters to replace injured Brandon Morrow, Kyle Drabek and Drew Hutchison.

The Jays, with their four all-stars, resume the second half of the season when they play the Tampa Bay Rays, with their one all-star (Ben Zobrist) Friday night at the Rogers Centre.

The current Jays remind me of the 1982 Montreal Expos.

Left fielder Tim Raines, centre fielder Andre Dawson, catcher Gary Carter and right-hander Steve Rogers were in the starting lineup that all-star night before 59,057 fans. And first baseman Al Oliver was on the bench.

All those all-stars ...

Yet the Expos managed 86 wins, six games back of the St. Louis Cardinals.